Sunny today but the forecast is for falling temps. I will have to water the gardens a bit and the meteorologists say we won't get any significant rain for the next week. We are looking at a busy week with two doctors' appointments and a trip to the license bureau to renew the car registration.

So Trump went back to Butler, Ohio. I saw about a half hour of his rally. I got the feeling that his handlers told him that Harris is mopping the floor with him with her hopeful rhetoric and he needs to tone down the gloom and doom. Unfortunately I came across as totally faked. The man is not at all authentic unless he is spewing out grievance. At least the start I saw didn't disintegrate into the usual pity party. I don't know if that came later because I switched the channel.

So the Oklahoma Secretary of Education put out a contract for bid. He mandates that a Bible will be in every classroom and all teachers are to "teach from the Bible," what ever the hell that means. Will students learn math in terms of "cubits" or "shekels?" Will they learn meteorology or physics by studying the Red Sea crossing in Exodus? The details of the bid are interesting. The Bibles must 1) be the "authorized" (by whom) King James Translation, 2) must include the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and Pledge of Allegiance, and 3) must be leather bound. My, my--does any one else notice how nicely tailored that list is? It is the Trump Bible which comes in at $60/a piece. Takes care of two birds with one stone: force feeds students Christianity while filling Trumps pockets.

Found this article first thing this morning. I thought from early on that the Israeli aim, what ever they said, was vengeance pure and simple. And they weren't interested in distinguishing between Hamas and "civilians." And though the passages of the Bible cited in the article seem heavily weighted in the "vengeance is mine saith the Lord" I remember all too well the preachers reminding their flocks that He acts through men. Unfortunately, our government in recognizing the "justice" of Israel's cause have failed to recognize the lust for vengeance that has overtaken the thirst for justice. In a sense they have erased the difference between the two words. And we, through our government, are shackled to vengeance whether we want to be or not.

Charles Hughes Smith posted a pretty good overview of our current social/political mess.  I would add a couple of comments. Those at the top of the social/political/financial pyramid do have a "kick the can down the road" mentality--in other words, business as usual. But they also have a selective view of what constitutes a crisis. They may see inflation as a problem but not extreme weather, obesity but not our food supply system. And when they do recognize a problem they always see someone else as the villain of the crisis. Inflation is all because of THOSE workers who want wage increases never thinking that when wages go up prices do too. Obesity would not be a problem if THOSE glutinous idiots simply stopped stuffing themselves but the powers-that-be never consider how industrial food production has engineered their products 1) addictive, 2) contain maximum fat, salt, sweeteners, and 3) minimally nutritious. They also fail to see how the various crises are interconnected and exacerbate each other. Simply kicking the can down the road doesn't help when the interconnected crises eat away the road.